Graphics Enhancement Mod (GEM) v2.4. Updated: December 22, 2012

[Deon]

I've learned about your mod from one let's play, and I just could not stop myself from coming here to say THANK YOU. This is an amazing job you did here .

[dejagore]

ORIGINAL: Martian

NEW LANDSCAPES

Original artworks were not created by me but were searched and taken from the net, mostly from Terragen's gallery. I just resized, framed and colour graded them. So all kudos and credits go to their creators.

Landscapes are resized and adjusted to perfectly fit game's interface.

Unfortunately, at the present moment DW has a hard-coded limit to use only few first images. So it uses only 4 images for continental planets (+1 from forest folder), 3 for desert, marshyswamp and ice planets, 2 for volcanic and oceanic planets. Hopefully this will be fixed in "Shadows" release, but for now most of these landscapes wouldn't appear in the game.

If you want some particular landscapes to be present in the game, please rename them to use first few numbers. For example, use names from "landscape_0" up to "landscape_3" for continental planets.

Is it still impossible after Universe expansion to have more that 2-4 landscape images or is it finally modable ?

[HerrTelefonmann]

Thank you very much for this piece of work! [:)]

I had some troubles with incorrect shading on planets, but excluding the "shading.png" in environment/overlays/shadow from overwriting the vanilla files solved it for me.

[Buio]

ORIGINAL: HerrTelefonmann
Thank you very much for this piece of work! [:)]
I had some troubles with incorrect shading on planets, but excluding the "shading.png" in environment/overlays/shadow from overwriting the vanilla files solved it for me.

Might also want to remove the three star disc files from GEM. They are in images\environment\stars\ and called star_disc_0.png then 1 and 2 too. One of them creates strange dark stars.

[HerrTelefonmann]

ORIGINAL: Buio

Might also want to remove the three star disc files from GEM. They are in images\environment\stars\ and called star_disc_0.png then 1 and 2 too. One of them creates strange dark stars.

I'll do that. Thanks for the hint [:)]

[Oberst_Klink]

ORIGINAL: HerrTelefonmann

ORIGINAL: Buio

Might also want to remove the three star disc files from GEM. They are in images\environment\stars\ and called star_disc_0.png then 1 and 2 too. One of them creates strange dark stars.

I'll do that. Thanks for the hint [:)]

I had some game crashes earlier when I simply over-wrote the original images with the IMHO better GEM 2.4 mod; however, the following worked like ace: Just create a folder GEM in the customization folder, basically like a theme; had no problems at all!

Klink, Oberst

[Beastro]

I'm getting a little graphics bug with planets and moons.

I'd link a screenshot, but I don't have those privileges yet. The problem is that a second sphere is screated in the top left corner of every planet and moon, like the dark band along a half moon.

I'm using Universe, btw so apologies if this isn't compatible with it.

[drillerman]

I'm sure it is a problem with the shadowing PNG files.

[ShaBahNakk]

Hi,

if i remember right,it is a now bit hidden in this thread, do NOT use the shadows from "environment/overlays/shadow" since they produce this effect, just keep the regular ones and everything is fine.

Regards,

ShaBahNakk

[Beastro]

That fixed it!

Thanks guys!

[Mansen]

It looks like the planets aren't compatible (anymore?). The GEM planets are slightly larger than vanilla planets (an added outer glow), which resizes the planets down slightly and skews the shadows so that they appear outside of the planet.

[Darkspire]

ORIGINAL: Mansen

It looks like the planets aren't compatible (anymore?). The GEM planets are slightly larger than vanilla planets (an added outer glow), which resizes the planets down slightly and skews the shadows so that they appear outside of the planet.

Update the file shading.png

Copy the file shading.png from;

Matrix Games\Distant Worlds\images\environment\overlays\shadow

Paste the copy to;

Matrix Games\Distant Worlds\Customization\*YouThemeName*\images\environment\overlays\shadow

The one in GEM is 480x480, the current vanilla (the one you copied) is 456x456.

Darkspire

[Mansen]

No, DS. Not the Shadows file. I'm talking about the fact that the planet files are larger than vanilla, which messes up the shadow.

You can clearly see how the resized planets are messing up the shadow placement. GEM's planets have blank space and a slight outer glow.



I wonder what (if any) has changed regarding landscapes too - GEM has a bunch of additional landscapes for all planet types, but according to the UW Modding guide it ignores any additional landscapes after the first couple. Is this a change since... Legends? (I assume this is when this was released?) and if so, that is pretty stupid. Surely we shouldn't be limited to half a handful of choices? Make it optional up to 10 or 20 if that is what people want - If you can apply them manually afterwards, surely the generator can handle it too?

[Darkspire]

I never use GEM, I only use vanilla so I would not have noticed.

Vanilla barren rock planet size is 256x256

GEM barren rock planet size is 266x266

Logic suggests to check the vanilla ones against the ones in GEM, if the consistency in size is uniform then run a batch resize from within an art program that is able to both handle PNG files and batch functions.

As long as the resize is a decrease then there will be no noticeable loss in quality of the images.

Darkspire

[Mansen]

The barren planets aren't the issue - Sets like the Continental and Desert are, because of the glow, Martian added. I was merely pointing out that they (no longer?) match with the game and causes issues even with the removed shadow file. I've been manually fixing planets for about an hour now since batch won't work.

I'm still curious what has changed - If vanilla planets used to be bigger in earlier expansions, or if the game has started scaling the images down rather than letting the larger dimensions stay.

I'd love to know about the backdrops though - Did the devs scale down on the number of backdrops allowed since the last version of GEM was released, or did Martian just drop the ball by putting in more backdrops than the engine would allow for?

(I'm asking because the Legends modding guide doesn't mention images in detail at all, but UW's makes it clear that only a small number of backdrops per planet type are detected - but you can use custom ones manually, which seems ... dumb to be honest)

[necaradan666]

If you mean landscapes GEM included a bunch and the game only used a few. I picked out favourites that all looked photorealistic and renamed them for my game.

[Darkspire]

The barren planets aren't the issue - Sets like the Continental and Desert are, because of the glow, Martian added. I was merely pointing out that they (no longer?) match with the game and causes issues even with the removed shadow file. I've been manually fixing planets for about an hour now since batch won't work.

Tried a macro record? I have PSP 9, great for awkward jobs like these, would say Irfanview as it is the best for any batch processing of any type of file but it does not play well with PNG files.

I'm still curious what has changed - If vanilla planets used to be bigger in earlier expansions, or if the game has started scaling the images down rather than letting the larger dimensions stay.

No idea, but scaling them down would only lead to a small increase in general performance, think that may why they are resized, smaller in the current release, a much better chance of increased performance.

I'd love to know about the backdrops though - Did the devs scale down on the number of backdrops allowed since the last version of GEM was released, or did Martian just drop the ball by putting in more backdrops than the engine would allow for?

(I'm asking because the Legends modding guide doesn't mention images in detail at all, but UW's makes it clear that only a small number of backdrops per planet type are detected - but you can use custom ones manually, which seems ... dumb to be honest)

Maybe they are there to give you a choice of what images to use? I would like the backdrops increased, I have Mojoworld and have some great planetary images.

Darkspire

[AstroCat]

ORIGINAL: Mansen

The barren planets aren't the issue - Sets like the Continental and Desert are, because of the glow, Martian added. I was merely pointing out that they (no longer?) match with the game and causes issues even with the removed shadow file. I've been manually fixing planets for about an hour now since batch won't work.

I'm still curious what has changed - If vanilla planets used to be bigger in earlier expansions, or if the game has started scaling the images down rather than letting the larger dimensions stay.

Yeah I'm seeing the same issue, could we edit the shadow file?

[Darkspire]

ORIGINAL: AstroCat

ORIGINAL: Mansen

The barren planets aren't the issue - Sets like the Continental and Desert are, because of the glow, Martian added. I was merely pointing out that they (no longer?) match with the game and causes issues even with the removed shadow file. I've been manually fixing planets for about an hour now since batch won't work.

I'm still curious what has changed - If vanilla planets used to be bigger in earlier expansions, or if the game has started scaling the images down rather than letting the larger dimensions stay.

Yeah I'm seeing the same issue, could we edit the shadow file?

GEM has planets of differing sizes so resizing the shadow file would not be possible, resize is the only way.

Darkspire

[AstroCat]

Yeah I see what's up. It's shrinking his back down to 256x256, thus his planets end up too small for the shadow file. You need to crop his files back down to 256x256 (leaving his planets the correct size, and get rid of his trim) and then re-save them, that should work. Although some of the edges get cut so it's a bit more work... I guess you do have to resize the planets as well.